Door Gods

The story of the door gods begins with an emperor who couldn't sleep.

Legend says Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, after years of war and much killing, was haunted after taking the throne by nightly dreams of vengeful ghosts coming for his life. Terrified and sleepless, he let the affairs of state all but grind to a halt, and none of the imperial physicians' remedies worked.

The great generals Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong volunteered. In full armor, one on the left and one on the right, they stood guard outside his bedchamber all night. Strangely enough, from that night on the ghosts dared not come near, and Taizong finally slept soundly.

But there was a problem: after many nights on guard, even men of iron couldn't keep it up. Unwilling to see his beloved generals wear themselves out, Taizong came up with a solution. He had the court painters make full-length portraits of the two in their imposing battle dress and pasted them on the doors of his bedchamber. The ghosts saw the portraits from afar and still dared not approach.

As word spread, ordinary people rushed to copy him, pasting portraits of the two generals on their own doors. And once pasted, they stayed for more than a thousand years, right down to today's Lunar New Year.

Earlier door gods appear in the Classic of Mountains and Seas as quoted in the Lunheng by Wang Chong of the Eastern Han: beneath a great peach tree on Mount Dushuo in the Eastern Sea, two gods, Shentu and Yulei, caught ghosts and fed them to tigers. But for sheer drama, the pair of real men replaced by their portraits, Qin and Yuchi, won people's hearts, and they became the most popular door gods in Taiwan.

Home door gods are changed on a fixed schedule: after the gods are sent off on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month and before New Year's Eve, the old door gods are taken down and burned and new ones are pasted up, marking out with the old and in with the new. There's one key taboo when hanging them: the two door gods must face each other (faces turned inward toward one another), never back to back, or folk belief says they lose their protective power.

Hand-painted temple door gods don't need special offerings day to day, but every few years painters are called in to restore them; when a major temple is renovated, a traditional "door god consecration" is held, dotting the eyes with a vermilion brush to give the door gods their spirit. Folk belief also holds that if a home has been troubled for a long time, you can have a Taoist priest perform a rite and then hang new door gods to drive out the bad energy and settle the home.

When you visit a temple, remember not to step on the threshold or linger on it as you pass through the gate. At some temples the custom is for men to enter and leave on the left and women on the right, matching the positions of the two door gods. That's the most basic courtesy you can show them.

Lunar New Year (time to hang the door gods): Traditionally, door god pictures are changed after the "sending off the gods" day on the 24th of the 12th lunar month and before New Year's Eve. It is one of the key steps in a Taiwanese family's year-end cleaning and New Year decorating, and together with spring couplets, red envelopes, and the New Year's Eve dinner it forms the core of Lunar New Year customs.

A note: Door gods have no single shared birthday. As gods with a "job," their worship belongs to that of the main deity or the household, so there are few festivals held specifically for door gods.